sunset from behind the wire

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Fishwrap

White House Policy

Cleaning House: F.B.I. Agent Pleads Guilty in Leak to A.P.

SA Donald Sachtleben, FBI

The US Justice Department announced that Donald Sachtleben (age 55) a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent, has agreed to plead guilty to leaking classified information to The Associated Press about a foiled bomb plot in Yemen last year. Federal investigators said they identified him after obtaining phone logs of Associated Press reporters. Sachtleben has agreed to serve 43 months in prison. During this investigation, Special Agent Sachtleben was on administrative leave as the subject of a separate F.B.I. investigation for distributing child pornography, and has separately agreed to plead guilty in that matter and serve 97 months. (Savage/NYTimes/23September 2013) He was fired before his current plea deal, making him a "former special agent" at the time of conviction.

He will be eligible for release in 2026 at the age of 68.

Obama's Legacy

The touted progressive wet dream that became ObamaCare is unraveling as people open their insurance statements and find that in many cases their premiums will double thanks to Barack Obama's socialized medical program. At the same time, insurers are reducing the number of doctors and hospitals where ObamaCare will be accepted. You guessed it -- if you go there now and like it because it's really good, you're going to go somewhere else to get your high priced ObamaCare.

Losers: American Public

Winners: Insurance companies that backed Obama including AARP who sold their constituency down the river.

And in a Related Story

President Obama pledged to end partisanship, but instead has exacerbated it. He recently accused House Republicans of being extortionists for opposing a raise in the debt ceiling. Barack Obama once held the opposite position about debt and ceilings. In 2006, when George W. Bush was president, Sen. Obama said: “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.” Really? What, then, does it say about his leadership now?

With assistance from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, DHS will test its system at a Western Hockey League game in Washington state. The test will determine whether the system can distinguish the faces of 20 volunteers out of a crowd of nearly 6,000 hockey fans, to evaluate how successfully BOSS can locate a person of interest.

According to DHS, BOSS technology consists of two cameras capable of taking stereoscopic images of a face and a back end remote matching system. Stereoscopic images are two images of the same object, taken at slightly different angles that create an illusion of three-dimensional depth from two-dimensional images.

The cameras transfer the pair of images to the remote matching system by way of fiber optic or wireless technology. The system then processes and stores the two images into a 3-D signature, which is the mathematical representation of the stereo-pair images that the system uses for matching. [Read more: King/BiometricUpdate/20September2013]

They were obtained by court order. It's just that in the past, the government notified the press that there was a problem. Gentleman's agreement. Holder/Obama are not gentlemen and they changed the rules.

Sachtleben retired several years ago, and came back as a contractor. Wonder where his pension money is going?

Opus - the important point of the AP story was missed by most in the AP, and FOX for that matter because members of the Press think they are not to be investigated. They ARE to be investigated, they are just not normally charged, as they are not normally the ones doing the 'stealing.' The warrant to get James Rosen's phone records stated he was "at least" a co-conspirator, as if they would charge him with reporting the illegally obtained material, or at least indicating they had evidence that proved he took part or directed the "leak" as opposed to just reporting information provided to him. A logical step after finding that a reporter has classified information, would be to get a court order or warrant for his phone records. They could have obtained the records by saying that he had information that could only have been obtained from classified files, and that somebody committed a crime by providing that information, without naming Rosen as a co-conspirator...but they didn't.

Housekeeping

As of January 1, 2017 this blog began to receive anonymous posts. I try not to delete them, but if you want to be taken seriously here, you need to identify yourself, if only by some sort of cryptonym.

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"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the cat. "We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad," asked Alice?

"You must be," said the cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Good Morning

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This blog is an extension of MY JOURNEY because sometimes my journey needs more explanation, and sometimes there is more to be said than can be expressed on one ordinary blog.

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* Steers do not sign treaties with meat packers. (think on that)

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THE OLD WHORE (NOVEL)

In the peculiar culture of the Central Intelligence Agency, "old whores" are people who will do whatever it takes to get the job done, irrespective of the cost.

EXILES FROM EDEN (NOVEL)

Sparks fly as two star-crossed lovers meet. He runs toward trouble as she yearns for something missing. And it ends in a flight from and toward justice.

About Me

Today, I balance work and play as much as anyone can. All things remaining equal, play is more important. Life is short - it's important to make every day count for something, if only to yourself.
I'm a former tinker/tailor/soldier/sailor who has now decided that maybe it really wasn't all done for nothing.

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